Refugee royal fled revolution

THE Princess Tatiana von Metternich, who has died at Schloss
Johannisberg, her home in Germany, aged 91, was the widow of Prince
Paul Alfons, the last Prince von Metternich-Winneburg, and one of
the most beautiful women of her day, highly cultivated and well
known in international society.

Living in Berlin, Bohemia and on the Rhine during World War II,
she witnessed the effect of Nazism on Germany, was close to those
involved in the unsuccessful plot to kill Hitler in 1944, and was
forced to trek 600 kilometres across Germany to escape the Russian
advance. This she described in her memoirs, Tatiana - Five
Passports in a Shifting Europe, and the story of those times
was retold in the memorable Berlin Diaries 1940-1945 by her
sister, Princess Marie Vassiltchikov.

She was born Princess Tatiana Vassiltchikov in St Petersburg,
the second daughter of Prince Illarion Vassiltchikov, a member of
the Russian Imperial Parliament, and Princess Lydia Wiazemsky.

Her childhood was overshadowed by the deaths of many of her
parents' friends and relations, victims of the Russian Revolution.
She owed her departure from Russia to King George V, who sent a
British warship to rescue his aunt, the Dowager Empress of Russia,
from the Crimea. The Empress refused to leave unless those who
wished to escape accompanied her, and the British fleet obliged by
sending as many ships as possible.

In April 1919, they arrived in France, and von Metternich's
early years were spent as a refugee in France, Germany and
Lithuania.

Attending the French lycee of St Germain-en-Laye, near Paris,
she befriended Prince Felix Youssoupoff, the murderer of Rasputin,
despite her mother's disapproval.

During World War II von Metternich moved to Berlin to work for
the German Foreign Ministry. One evening she and a friend were
outside the Hotel Adlon and saw groups of SS officers, clearly
waiting for important people. They took up places in the hotel. "A
few minutes later," she recalled, "the doors were flung open and in
marched Hitler, Goering, Goebbels and a few others: they strutted
past our table in a tight group. How small they were! They looked
like stuffed dolls, unreal, caricatures but they exuded importance
and frightening power."

In August 1940 von Metternich met Prince Paul Alfons, the head
of the Metternich family and a great-grandson of Prince Metternich,
the Austrian Chancellor at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. On leave
from France, where he was serving with the cavalry, he fell for von
Metternich, and married her in 1941. The couple settled in Spain
before he left for the Russian front. In August 1942, 300 bombs
fell on their Rheingau home, Schloss Johannisberg, destroying it.
Later she became associated with some of those German aristocrats
and princes who plotted to kill Hitler in July 1944, after which
all German princes were forbidden to serve in the army, saving
Prince Paul Metternich from falling into Soviet hands.

In May 1945 the couple were expelled from Konigswart palace and
walked 600 kilometres to the ruined Schloss Johannisberg, writing
references for all their staff, urging they be allowed to follow.
To these documents they pressed an imprint of the great seal of
Chancellor Metternich, so often used at the Congress of Vienna.

"I remembered our flight from the Crimea had also meant the
choice between living in a free world or under communist
oppression," she wrote. "At times like these, possessions lose all
value".

Left behind at Konigswart were walking sticks with jewelled
knobs that had belonged to Napoleon, coins, cameos and the library.
Princess Tatiana took a ring that had belonged to Marie Antoinette
and travelled in a long, flat farm cart, piled high with hay for
the horses and escorted by seven French former prisoners of
war.

Thus they crossed various checkpoints, and turned south at the
news of the Soviet advance. They finally stayed with Prince Friedel
and Princess Margarita of Hohenlohe at Schloss Langenburg, and were
given refuge at Wolfsgarten by Prince and Princess Ludwig of Hesse,
who took so many refugees of different kinds under their wing at
the end of the war, including the widowed Princess Sophie of
Hesse-Cassel (like Margarita of Hohenlohe, a sister of Britain's
Prince Philip).

As Schloss Johannisberg was an empty shell, they lived in the
housekeeper's flat, and after the war rebuilt the greater part of
the castle. Princess Tatiana helped the Red Cross and the poor,
especially in Eastern Europe.

She headed the Order of St Lazarus on official delegations to
Russia in 1991, running humanitarian food aid programs.

She founded the renowned annual Rheingau Music Festival,
attracting famous artists for concerts at Johannisberg.

A keen watercolourist she also wrote books, including her
memoirs, published in 1976 and updated and republished in 1988,
which documented the plight of aristocrats before and after World
War II. She also published a book about Russia.

After Paul Metternich's death in September 1992, Princess
Tatiana discovered that he had left much of his fortune to a
mistress. As a result, she was obliged to sell Schloss Johannisberg
to a member of the German industrial family, Oetker, but was
allowed to remain there until her death.

Though confined to Schloss Johannisberg in recent years due to
ill health, Princess Tatiana had been a frequent visitor to
Britain, where she had many friends, not least in the royal
family.

She had no children, but adopted a relative, Don Alvaro de
Salinas, as her heir.